| Occam demands not to dig deeper than it should be enough. Bunch of people, who lives in the deeps of an agrarian country (and TV isn't available yet), sees something extremely out of regular order of things. And that is coming for them! Of course they would be afraid of this totally unfamiliar experience. Some notes: I'm not sure how far those people were from the point where Gagarin ejected, but they probably heard some strange sounds before the encounter. Parachutes were a known thing by that time, though if you never seen it on the ground before you probably wouldn't recognize it as such. Pilots were still flying in a pilot's flight gear[0], at least in the collective consciousness. Someone/something in a big round helmet and a bright orange suit doesn't register as a pilot's flight gear nor as something have seen before. You can see how (a decade before) some people perceived the "space suits", unsurprisingly - just a like a winter soldier gear. *grin* By the '60s the understanding on how a space suit should look emerge, but it still was quite off the real deal: [2] (Be sure to check mini-Godzillas attack at ~1:00!) As you can see [3] there were a bright red CCCP label on his helmet. Looks like that didn't helped much. [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pilot_Boris_Safonov.... [1] https://youtu.be/Q59hwGqL3Q4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjnZ3Nc8VZ4 [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gagarin_suit.jpg |
